I’m in Europe and it’s anecdotal but there are SO many acquaintances that are sick with corona right now. Also not particularly mild, some are in bed since 1+ week with bad symptoms. Fuck this virus and fuck the people who don’t care about the well-being of the person next to them.
Japan here. Both wife and I have many sick coworkers. Nearly all of them were corona positive.
I have the first friend that has really bad long-covid now, too. She’s visibly weaker and exhausted. Ouff.
I worry that long covid is going to be one of the things that breaks the global economy long-term (likely leading to accelerated automation), if we can’t sort out a therapy for it.
Also in Europe (Germany) and there have been a lot of people OOO due to illness. So far my family has stayed free of it.
Hey everybody! Lets all return to the office! Quick! Commercial real-estate landlords aren’t rich enough. We need to fill those buildings ASAP!
Office buildings are either test tubes or petri dishes depending on the height to width ratio.
You know, even before COVID-19, there would be flu, rsv, etc. outbreaks and there would barely be a blerb about it. People would send kids to school sick, literally everyone would catch it, and it sucked. Maybe less lethal, but it still sucked. And I always caught whatever was going around cause we just didn’t have the culture here.
At least now there’s more recognition, some people might wear masks, and there’s a fighting chance I don’t catch the thing everyone gets that season (at least in California where it’s still ok to wear a mask without ridicule).
Except my sister gave me COVID two months ago since I let her stay here to avoid homelessness. Can’t fix bad habit family members, and getting a false negative on a test gave her confidence to get me and my baby sick. Ugh, bad times.
where it’s still ok to wear a mask without ridicule
Serious question, why are people being ridiculed for wearing masks in the US? Is this generally how it goes in all of the US?
I’m from Asia and most countries here have been wearing masks even before the pandemic for multiple reasons - pollution, not wanting to spread sickness including the basic cough and cold not just flu or COVID, when at a clinic or hospital, etc. I wear a mask even when I just have allergic rhinitis just so that I don’t accidentally blow snot all over somebody else. No one would bat an eye here if you wore a mask.
I don’t understand the negative connotation to wearing masks and why anyone would care if you’re wearing one.
US culture is founded on individualism at the expense of everyone else. A lot of people buy into the idea that any kind of government imposed action, even as minor as wearing a face covering that even helps the wearer, is a horrible tragedy and assault on their ability to make bad decisions. Those people are belligerent and numerous.
The US government were also months late to handling COVID, and the conservative leadership in power was actively demonizing safety protocols such as masks, vaccines, social distancing, etc not to mention their own Center for Disease Control, to the point that a fair percentage of the population is distrustful of medical science and unwilling to consider those safety protocols.
A lot of the news media (left and right) focused on things like getting people back to work in spite of the ongoing pandemic so it really forced the narrative away from collective safety and survival into economic prioritization and the illusion of normalcy.
Yeah. In Malaysia before covid, every flu season i could see some people(not a lot) start wearing mask, and people masked up as well in hazy season. Just before Covid become the pandemic i can see people already started to wear one before the mandate. Of course, nowadays some butthurt netizen will still jab at those wear mask here and there, but other than that, i still see people wear mask everywhere i go, which is a great thing. Sanitary and personal health shouldn’t be something that get ridiculed.
But then again, it’s Asia, and SARS is pretty big back then.
Politics, the party in charge decided that the best response was to pretend the problem didn’t exist and maybe it’ll go away. Wearing a mask is a very public sign that there is a problem.
Maybe before the pandemic someone somewhere might have said something but not now. Even living in a rural area people don’t say anything at all. I don’t know where that user got the idea that you’d be ridiculed.
I still frequently wear a mask in busy/crowded areas and have probably received a dozen comments about it in the last week alone. So it definitely happens.
I don’t wear a mask anymore, but people glare at people that do. I also got a lot of harassing comments when I was wearing a mask last year.
because wearing a mask is for pussies.
it’s really as simple as that. it’s seen as weak and pathetic and makes you an object of ridicule.
Protecting others is weak and pathetic? Alrighty then. Bet you’re a “Christian” too.
Is this you saying that or are you quoting some other people?
Those outbreaks didn’t kill a million people Ina year, and did not strain the hospital system to the point of breaking.
Well, there was the Spanish flu which also lead to mask mandates and other social safety measures as covid.
Some 40 to 70 thousand people in the US die every year from the flu. I think the big thing is most people don’t care until it affects them personally. It’s been weird seeing covid coverage be all, “THINK OF THE DEATHS” as if that meaningfully would change much
1 million+ vs 70k… hard to compare COVID to flu
Meth is hard.
40k to 70k isn’t even correct. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html
I’m in Australia and half my kids class was sick last week. Me and the kid both tested positive today. It is pretty rough.
Nobody here cares at all any more. This is my first but most people are on their 2nd or more go around. Its not even discussed, there are zero masks, and people are sending their kids to school sick.
All our care and caution just in the bin because people just don’t give a shit
It might have to do with the fact that by far most of the population has some degree of immunity now due to infection or vaccination, making the disease much less lethal than it was, and now completely comparable to other flu viruses. I don’t want everyone to freak out every time some mild disease is in season. Yes, it sucks to get a cold, and it sucks to get the flu, but if nobody ever catches them we will have very low levels of immunity in the population, making it far worse when people do eventually catch them.
After covid I was bedridden a couple weeks because of common colds. Thats never happened before. The amount of people hospitalised due to other diseases than covid also spiked (we have statistics for this). The reason was that very few people had gotten sick for two years, so nobody had any immunity agains anything they weren’t vaccinated against (which is most cold- or flu viruses).
So your standpoint is that you want people to walk around making each other sick regardless of the consequences? And your reason for this is that you spent two weeks in bed? That’s whacky man
So your standpoint is that you want people to walk around making each other sick regardless of the consequences?
I never said that. I said that if nobody ever gets sick, the consequences are much larger when disease does spread. Just check the statistics for any country post-covid lockdowns, and you will se a spike in non-covid related respiratory disease. Plenty of doctors and researchers have pointed out that the reason was very little respiratory disease during lockdowns/quarantining periods leading to low immunity in the population. I want to minimise the consequences long-term, and I’m saying that I prefer to get mildly sick once or twice a year over getting extremely sick every other year.
And your reason for this is that you spent two weeks in bed?
It seems like you didn’t even read the whole paragraph. As I said, what I experienced wasn’t unique, but something we could also see in statistics over hospitalisations. I’m lucky enough to only have been in bed, but for people with preexisting conditions, the same infections could have been much worse. Again: If most people get mildly sick every now and then (as we always have) we prevent outbreaks from wreaking havoc and hospitalising a bunch of people when the do happen.
No, most people don’t have some degree of immunity. They found out very early during the pandemic that Covid damages the immune system and that you can basically assume you won’t gain immunity. Stop pretending it’s the flu.
Fun fact: if you got sick during the first wave, getting it again will not result in any immunity.
I’m not pretending coronavirus is literally a type of flu virus. It just happens to be a novel flu virus that we don’t have as much exposure and immunity to yet. There are plenty of historical examples of what happens when a population is hit by a virus that it has little or no immunity against, even though that virus is relatively harmless to those with immunity.
That is not an argument against vaccines, and it is not an argument against all the precautions that were taken when Covid-19 first hit. Those were both necessary for the population to build as much immunity as possible, with as few as possible deaths and as little as possible sickness.
It is an argument for the fact that Covid-19 must be treated differently now and in the future vs. how it was initially treated. It is now a virus that most of the population as some degree of immunity against (due to both infections and vaccines). If you doubt that that’s the case, just look at the reproduction numbers for Covid-19 outbreaks, which are still ongoing. In the initial waves, just a handfull of infections were capable of spreading to entire countries, killing thousands, within just weeks. If a handfull of people get Covid-19 now, that is no longer the case, even though we aren’t quarantining people. This is a direct result of herd immunity. Just like we have flu season, where different flu viruses spread in local epidemics, Covid-19 will continue to spread in local, seasonal epidemics in the foreseeable future (likely “forever”), but it is no longer the same threat as it was when nobody had any immunity to it.
because wearing masks did shit. that’s why.
vaccines did.
wearing masks did shit
Citation needed.
it’s not about science. it’s about public perception. masks didn’t stop covid. vaccines did.
people will not wear masks again. they would probably get another vaccine though.
ending covid = getting rid of mask mandates, in the publics viewpoint.
Ok, in this context you are right in spiritt. Masks are stoping tje spread, but in the grand scheme of things it is mostly about slowing it down.
However I don’t think saying the masks do nothing is right at all. Masks are still useful.
Except he’s not right in any sense with that logic. “masks didn’t work because people feel like they didn’t work” is not a valid argument.
He is right in sense that vaccines “stopped” covid, while masks were mostly just slowing it down but not enough to “stop” it. That’s what I meant by being right in spirit. Otherwise I agree he is wrong.
It’s funny, I didn’t get COVID while I was wearing a mask, but caught it after we were vaccinated and I stopped wearing them.
I’m not just going to downvote you here, because I think this is an information problem.
Here’s a cool video about mask efficacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GndKYJ4uBI
And a study on the topic: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm
The tl:dr is that masks are ac5ually extremely effective at reducing infection by respiratory diseases if both the infected and uninfected parties wear them.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=3GndKYJ4uBI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
It blows my mind how upset people get about masking. During the two primary years of Covid where I isolated and masked religiously, I didn’t get sick once or even have allergies (despite visiting parks often).
Now companies have RTO and try to get everyone in on the same days so illness spreads like wildfire. People sitting right beside me hacking their lungs out.
It blows my mind how upset people get about masking
The pandemic is when I gave up on the notion that diehard conservatives had even a shred of intelligence or morals. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from them.
I wear masks but I absolutely hate it. Maybe if you work from home you don’t notice, but wearing that thing for 9-10 hours can be a real pain. On top of that you miss a lot of a person’s face, I had to meet a lot of new people during that time and it was hard.
I’m not saying it’s enjoyable. It’s especially awful when it’s hot & humid, if you wear glasses, or when wearing for a long period of time. But when the alternative is increasing the chances of catching/spreading a dangerous virus… well there isn’t much of an argument against.
Nice anecdotal story. I know many people that masked and still do and got multiple brands of vaccines and multiple boosters and still got sick multiple times. So which one of us is correct? Neither. There are far more variables that matter.
Do you not understand what “reduction” means?
Nice anecdotal story. I know many people…
Love when people follow up calling someone elses arguments anecdotal by providing their own anecdotal arguments.
People do not want to be told what to do. They do not want to be inconvenienced.
Personally I hated wearing a mask. it was a huge pain in my ass, and mostly unnecessary most of the time except on public transit or in like a very crowded place like a grocery store.
If wearing a mask is a pain in your ass then you’re wearing it wrong.
Depends, a lot of people talk out their ass. :P
Where exactly were you wearing a mask other than crowded public places? Nobody ever told you to wear it at home.
In my country, there was a mask mandate in all enclosed areas except private residences, even when you were the only person there.
In what non private residence enclosed places are you alone? I can’t think of any. Are you talking about hotels or… Because yea that would be ridiculous. But also, since you’re alone it’s not like anyone can enforce the mandate or even know you’re not following it.
In my case, it was a hackerspace. It has windows to the street, so if the police would have happened to go along the street and see that, they could have intervened.
There was one report in the newspapers where they fined a small card playing organization due to that, but of course they were a group of people.
I’ve never stopped wearing a mask in public transport/while grocery shopping etc. and I don’t think I will =/
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Fuck I am so sorry. Gonna continue wearing the mask for people like you especially.
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I still do, though nearly zero of that is due to virus stuff. I’d say for me it’s 95% I’m too lazy to retrain myself to keeping a neutral expression, 4% because hiding my ugly mug seems polite, and 1% sickness reduction ( combination of allergies, flu, covid. Etc)
Valid
Me neither. I’m also in a part of the United States where people seem to give a damn at least a little more. I’m never the only person wearing a mask in the stores I shop at. And shockingly (not really), we have a lot less COVID-19 than the national average.
So, not planning to stop any time soon.
I stopped, but only because the active infections went down to a negligible number in my area.
Are you sure they weren’t just being recorded anymore? How many people continued to test themselves and informed the responsible people? I know at least in Germany we don’t have any accurate numbers anymore.
I saw a major drop in cases coming into my hospital as well. People just weren’t coming in with COVID symptoms. Not nearly the amount of airborne precautions on rooms. They were shutting down entire floors during delta.
For me that would just be anecdotal data and I would not base my actions on that.
Good luck getting the ignorant masses to mask up these days.
At least locally there’s a clear anti-mask attitude. There is no way you can get a middle aged man, who listens right wing media, to wear a mask again. They reminisce the last time like a lost unjust war and because covid didn’t hit bad here, they think it was just a hoax of the pharmaceutical industry.
In the US, it’s extremely unlikely we’ll see more masks being required unless we see the Healthcare system getting overwhelmed with sick Covid patients again.
Politically it will be suicide for the democrats.
I don’t know, the people who threw hissy fits about masking were Republicans, who, historically, don’t vote for Democrats.
You’d be surprised, a lot of democrats (so called anyway) were pissed off about wearing them too. Especially in the inner city.
Looks like I’ll be masking for 8 hours straight on my flight home. It’s a bastard (my glasses fog up constantly), but that’s life.
I just hope it gets tamed before term starts since I’d rather not be forced to teach hybrid again (the style of lesson where every student loses)!
Get a piece of tissue paper and fold it into a thin lengthwise strip. Put it on top of the bridge of your nose and underneath the mask. No more fog.
The fog means it’s not fit properly. Air should not be escaping over the bridge of the nose it should diffuse out of the entire mask. Either the strips across the top are not being bent correctly to contour the nose or the mask just can’t be made to fit your face shape and you need to try something else.
I don’t wear glasses full time, just sunglasses and reading glasses, but they’re really hard to make compatible with masks. Fogging up sounds like an inconvenience but you basically can’t see within seconds. I wonder if a lot of people opted for contacts or lasik during this period to help compensate. Regardless, yes, masks on flights just make sense. It’s a huge number of strangers in a very close space and not something you need to do every day. You’re not exercising or socializing or moving about in public so why not just mask up and sit tight.
Buy a few good reusable masks (that you can run through the washer) that have a metal strip inside to conform to your nose. Have the top of the mask up high on the bridge of your nose and push down on it so the metal strip conforms to your nose shape. Rest the plastic feet of your glasses on top of the metal strip, so that they’re resting on the mask and not on your nose. That’s what I figured out keeps my breath from escaping the top of the mask so it eliminates fogging.
It’s a conundrum for me in my part of the US. Do I risk catching covid or catching hands from stupid people?
Well, if they do attack you, you can sue them and then own their double-wide? I don’t know if that’s a win or not, though.
And a truck with nuts
The double-wide might already have nuts on it!
you realize that civil suits take years and a lot of money? not all of us have 50K in the bank to hire a lawyer for 2-4 years so we can get the payout.
Hm maybe I should’ve held off on giving away all my extra masks…
I kept mine, still have a huge package. My thought was to use them in the winter months anyways. Always like that about countries like Japan. Even if it’s not a deadly worldwide pandemic, I think we can do a bit to spread less sickness with really only a tiny inconvenience.
Physician here. Masks absolutely reduce transmission and the chance of contracting COVID.
Here is the definitive study on the subject.
Here is a video of a presentation by one of the authors along with some demonstrations and explanations.
TLDR: Here is the Abstract:
There is ample evidence that masking and social distancing are effective in reducing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission. However, due to the complexity of airborne disease transmission, it is difficult to quantify their effectiveness, especially in the case of one-to-one exposure. Here, we introduce the concept of an upper bound for one-to-one exposure to infectious human respiratory particles and apply it to SARS-CoV-2. To calculate exposure and infection risk, we use a comprehensive database on respiratory particle size distribution; exhalation flow physics; leakage from face masks of various types and fits measured on human subjects; consideration of ambient particle shrinkage due to evaporation; and rehydration, inhalability, and deposition in the susceptible airways. We find, for a typical SARS-CoV-2 viral load and infectious dose, that social distancing alone, even at 3.0 m between two speaking individuals, leads to an upper bound of 90% for risk of infection after a few minutes. If only the susceptible wears a face mask with infectious speaking at a distance of 1.5 m, the upper bound drops very significantly; that is, with a surgical mask, the upper bound reaches 90% after 30 min, and, with an FFP2 mask, it remains at about 20% even after 1 h. When both wear a surgical mask, while the infectious is speaking, the very conservative upper bound remains below 30% after 1 h, but, when both wear a well-fitting FFP2 mask, it is 0.4%. We conclude that wearing appropriate masks in the community provides excellent protection for others and oneself, and makes social distancing less important.reduce
Sadly, a huge portion of the American public don’t have this word in their vocabulary. Masks and vaccines either eliminate all risk, and “work” or don’t completely eliminate all risk and therefore “don’t work.”
This lower ape thinking inflicted so much unnecessary death and suffering here.
It’s an intentional thing, pushed by propagandists. Thinking in absolutes reduces the need for critical thinking skills as whole. When you can make people boil everything in the world down to a binary, its very easy to tell them how to think, and equally easy to define the “out” group you all hate.
To wit, when masks “work or don’t work”, you can look at the people telling you to wear masks, and because masks “don’t work” they’re wrong, and if they’re wrong, then the people we aren’t telling you to wear a mask are right. You should always follow people who are right… right?
TY! Also a physician. So tired of this discussion. Everyone is masked in my clinic. Anecdotal, and my partner and I are still covid free, and hope to continue. Masking, distancing, hand washing, and isolation when sick, these simple, time tested, behavioral changes can significantly reduce risk of infection.
⭐ <– my lemmy gold for you, excellent writeup
No wait! Boris came on TV and said it was all over. He wouldn’t lie, would he? Oh, yeah.
I couldn’t get my booster back in April (in Latvia), because “the is no demand for it” so they just stopped offering them.
My mum works at a pediatrician. The other day she told me how they stopped ordering covid tests because there was literally no one coming to get tested.
Just wipe out half of humanity this time please.
Thanos much?
I appreciate the sentiment but that really would ruin life for the rest of us as the world economy and all industries crashed.
Economy and politics instead of human rights and health. Yeah I see you bootlicker.
What about the human rights of half of humanity that you’re calling to be wiped out? Lmao
